Basque, known as Euskara by its speakers, is a language spoken by about 600,000
people in northern Spain and another 80,000 in southwestern France. It is co-official
with Spanish in the Spanish Provinces of Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa, and Alava,
which are united under the Basque Autonomous Government, and it has a measure
of official standing in the province of Navarra, which constitutes its own autonomous
region. It has no official standing in France. Basque is a linguistic isolate,
a language with no known genetic relationship to any other language. It is the
only language remaining of those spoken in southwestern Europe before the Roman
conquest and although a number of attempts have been made to link it to ancient
Iberian, the Hamito-Semitic group, the Caucasian languages, and others, there
is little persuasive evidence for any of these theories, and its origins remain
uncertain.
In the early medieval period, the extent of the Basque speaking region was at
its peak. Since that time the language has been gradually losing ground to Spanish
and Catalan, though the frontier with Gascon in the north has been highly stable.
Within the last generation, however, the number of Basque-speakers has increased
significantly, and in many ways the circumstances of the language are better
than ever before: The Basque Government promotes the teaching and use of Basque,
and there is a great deal of education, publishing, and broadcasting in Basque,
including a daily newspaper, a television station, and a number of radio stations.
On the other hand, Basque faces the same enormous pressures as all other minority
languages. Knowledge of the national language (Spanish or French) is absolutely
required, and the great bulk of education, publishing, and broadcasting are
in the national languages.
Sources:
Buber's Basque page
Larry Trask's
Basque page
Philippe Mocoteguy's
page
Independent Study Courses Available at UCSD:
Other Local Resources:
UCSD International Center
SD cultural events
Mingei museum of folk art